The moment she opens her mouth I know exactly who she fucking is. Frankly, I was hoping to never see her again.

“It’s the bar, isn’t it?” I ask.

She smiles. It’s just like an American girl to pretend I’m being polite when I’m not.

“I’m just never quite sure,” she says with a little laugh. “Everywhere seems to have slightly different rules, you know? I’ve just starting asking so I don’t offend anyone.”

It’s the girl from the bridge.

That night.

That girl.

The one who stopped her car a year ago, the one who fucking talked me off a ledge and watched while I walked away.

Someone who saw me at my lowest point — well, all right, one of the lowest points, there’s been a fair fucking few — and who I really hoped I’d never see again, because the only thing worse than being seen like that is being seen like that by a pretty girl.

She blinks, and she’s got big hazel eyes framed with long lashes, some kind of eye makeup on but fuck me if I know what, but I know one thing: she’s trying to charm me by being friendly.

And it’s working. She’s even prettier now, in the pub, than on the verge of tears last year and since I’m stone-cold sober at the moment, I’m in far better shape to appreciate such.

Still doesn’t mean I want her here. I don’t think she recognizes me and I’d prefer she move on before she does.

“Right, it’s the bar, you order here,” I say. I don’t move from where I’m leaning, and I don’t uncross my arms. “But I’m fresh out of cosmopolitans, appletinis, lemondrops, or anything a girl could drink enough of to start making a scene, so that’s what you’re looking for I recommend you look elsewhere.”

Just leave. Please just leave.

Of course she doesn’t. She laughs. As if I was joking.

“This crowd drink you out of appletinis?” she asks, glancing around at the scattered old men each individually nursing a pint in silence.

I look back at the football highlights on the telly.

“Right.”

“What do you have?”

“Beer, cider, whiskey, gin. It’s a pub, love.”

“Then give me a pub beer.”

“We’ve got bitter and stout, and none of that shite with an orange slice. American girls usually don’t like it.”

She hops up onto a bar stool, flops her purse onto the stool next to her, and wriggles out of her jacket, pushing her hand through her curly hair.

It’s one hell of a wriggle. It’s a wriggle to make a man forget he wants this nosy, pushy American to leave his pub.

I could refuse, of course. I can refuse to serve anyone for any reason, but as much as I really want her to leave I also don’t, because she’s fucking pretty, she’s giving it right back to me, and maybe she’ll wriggle back into her jacket.

I pour her the beer, put it down in front of her.

“Three pounds twenty,” I say. She hands me a five pound note, and as I’m handing her change back, something on her left hand catches the light.

It’s a diamond ring.

No: it’s a diamond ring the size of a small lorry. Fucking wonder that she can lift her hand with that thing on it. Clearly someone else has been enticed by her wiggle, someone with quite a lot of money and a need to show it off.

That’s all it is, obviously. A ring that can be seen from orbit fucking smacks of insecurity and the desire to impress one’s friends more than it does of love, right?

She takes a sip, watching me, and I realize I haven’t moved. That I’m still standing in front of her, like I’m expecting to converse or something.

“It’s no appletini, but it’s not bad,” she says.

I love writing sexy, alpha men and the headstrong women they fall for.